Tory parliamentary candidates

Still true blue

A look at the Conservative class of 2010

AMONG the supposed inadequacies of David Cameron's project to remodel the Conservative Party has been the absence of a “Clause Four moment”. But if the Tory leader has not picked a fight with his party quite as symbolic as Tony Blair's rewriting of the Labour Party constitution in 1995, his efforts to make his parliamentary party less old, less white and less male have been almost as incendiary.

Recent weeks have yielded some high-profile rewards. Chloe Smith, 27 years old, won a by-election in Norwich North on July 23rd to become the youngest MP of any party. On August 4th Sarah Wollaston, a doctor and political neophyte, was selected in an open primary to contest Totnes, in south-west England, for the Conservatives. Many women on Mr Cameron's original “A-list” of favoured candidates, such as Margot James, Andrea Leadsom and Priti Patel, had already been chosen for winnable seats.

Yet three years after the first A-list was drawn up—there have been new versions since—the drive to change the make-up of the party still causes huge consternation. Some want Mr Cameron to go further, arguing that women still struggle to secure the safest Tory seats. Others grumble that his determination to recruit women has led to neglect of other under-represented groups, such as ethnic minorities. People from humble social backgrounds are particularly scarce among existing Tory MPs and the candidates who hope to join them. Indeed, some in the party fear that the poshness of the next intake of MPs will become a problem in the run-up to the election, which must be held by next June.

But the strongest reaction to Mr Cameron's zeal for change comes from those who think it has gone too far already. An aversion to positive discrimination is widespread in the party. The Tories' constituency associations are fiercely independent; Labour bosses have a much easier time “parachuting” favourites into plum seats. Of the candidates in the Tories' 220 target seats, only a quarter were on the original A-list. There is little enthusiasm for all-female shortlists, the blunt instrument employed by Labour to boost its number of women MPs.

The diversity of Tory hopefuls—there is likely to be the biggest influx of new Conservative MPs in decades—is one thing. Their ideology is quite another. Surveys of candidates in target seats by Conservative Intelligence, a new research group devoted to illuminating the inner workings of the party, reveal quite traditional views. Almost all support recognising marriage in the tax system and 85% want a lower time limit for abortion. This social conservatism is matched by right-wing views on taxing and spending: two-thirds want inheritance tax abolished and more want defence protected from spending cuts than any other area. Almost half would be comfortable with Scotland going independent, however—a stunning figure for what is still the Conservative and Unionist Party.

The candidates, the first to be selected in the Cameron era, do show some signs of being shaped by their leader's views. Two-thirds wanted same-sex civil partners to be afforded the same rights as married couples, and many wanted health care to be immune from austerity measures. Yet the suspicion that Mr Cameron's softer conservatism is shared by few beyond his inner circle is hard to shake.

Many of the candidates who are “modernisers” may be too young to be fast-tracked to high office, including Ms Smith. The Labour government has been around for so long that new entrants in 2001 and even 2005 have worked their way into the cabinet. The next Conservative government may not be in office long enough to be galvanised in quite the same way.